O'Reilly Radar » Sarah Milsteinhttp://radar.oreilly.com
Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologiesSat, 01 Aug 2015 15:57:56 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3Think of it like a political campaign: Baratunde Thurston's book marketinghttp://radar.oreilly.com/2012/05/baratunde-thurston-book-marketing.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/05/baratunde-thurston-book-marketing.html#commentsTue, 08 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2012/05/baratunde-thurston-book-marketing.htmlSince its release in late January, Baratunde Thurston’s book, “How To Be Black,” has sold more than 15,000 copies, hitting the New York Time bestseller list out of the gate. Thurston, The Onion’s former director of digital, and Craig Cannon, his campaign manager, have employed a slew of creative tactics for selling the book. In a recent interview, Thurston talked with me about what’s worked, what hasn’t, and the secret sauce for their campaign.

Before you dive in, I’ll note that Thurston — in addition to having written a terrific book — has a gift for making people feel like they want to be part of his world. Although I’d read excerpts of the book early on, as he included them in his email newsletter, and although I was given both an electronic and a print copy of the book, I still bought it, just to support him. How can you make that magic happen for your book? Read on.

Any sales numbers we can share for context?

Baratunde Thurston: We went into this with a goal of significant pre-sales to hit the New York Times bestseller list. How many does it take to do that? Anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 in sales, and it depends on what else has come out that week. The pre-sales all accrue to one week, so you can stack the deck. We had 20,000 pre-sales as a goal. That was insane. We wound up with several hundred pre-sales, which was helpful, but not a juggernaut. We hit the list at No. 21. Mostly, that was useful because The Times had me do a joint interview with Charles Murray that ran in print and online during Black History Month. And that drew some attention.

What we learned from this is that people do not buy books. They like to talk about books. They like to talk about buying them. But they do not buy them.

Also for context, how important are book sales for you?

Baratunde Thurston: Sales are important. I want people to read the book. I want them to spend money. This wasn’t a vanity publishing project, but it wasn’t a get-rich scheme, either. It was a way for me as a creative person to point to something solid. I speak, I tweet; it’s gone. I publish in very forgettable platforms. A book has some staying power. It’s a cultural object, a physical object on which you can focus some attention.

What elements of the campaign worked?

Baratunde Thurston: We decided to treat this like a political campaign — more about the issues than the politician. We asked ourselves: Can we create a sense of movement that has other people seeing themselves in a book about me?

There was a process to arrive at the plan, and it equaled me coming up with the marketing. I knew I had to get on it when I was on a trip somewhere, and I got an email from Harper [Collins Publishers]: “Do you think you’ll tweet about the book?”

There was a big research phase, talking to people I know or was introduced to, like Gary Vaynerchuk, Deanna Zandt, Eric Ries, Amber Rae at the Domino Project, and Tim Ferris. There were a lot of conversations had and articles read. There’s no excuse to make things up completely or rely on hope.

We went with a content-oriented promotion strategy — check out this video or tweet or interview. So, for example, we wound up with 50 short videos that we could build into the book and the campaign.

The book’s website was the heart. We posted a daily question every day in February, seeding it with the video I had already shot.

For speaking gigs I’d already booked, we asked if we could add book sales.

We had field ops — the Street Team. They were the ideal beta group: 115 people, half active and half of those really dedicated. We thought each street team member would equate to sales, but it’s turned out to be more important as a group that lets us test ideas.

We also identified the high-value donors — people who are going to deliver a bunch of votes or cash. I went through all my contacts manually, about 4,500 people, and scrubbed that down to about 1,800 real people. I tagged them lightly, looking at them in terms of relevance. And then I started reaching out to them one by one.

How did the Street Team work out?

Baratunde Thurston: We tried to build a very loyal, very intense community. People had to apply. We asked them to participate in web video chats. It was like they made it through basic training. And that was kind of the goal: to have a group of advocates you can deploy in different ways. At launch parties across the country, they help out. Craig crashes on their sofas. They provide a support network; they’re the volunteer fire department.

They also became an early-warning system for how the public would interpret the book. They weren’t biased the way the other people close to me were. For instance, during Street Team video chats, they asked questions the public would ask. So I’d go to launch parties and interviews really prepared with answers.

This notion of showing the book cover in the hands of people as an image of value — they helped create that. Somebody Photoshopped Michael Phelps holding it, and that was one of first we saw. We seeded that idea with the Street Team, and they ran with it. The Photoshopping became redundant because actual people were holding the book and people were taking their pictures. It turned into a photomeme as people began to post them [to Twitter and the “How To Be Black” website].

We had a roadmap of things we had to do, and one thing we didn’t miss was the Amazon reviews. We wanted to get them up within hours of the book’s availability to set the trend for five-star reviews. We had a video chat with the Street Team right before the Amazon release. Within hours, we had 10 five-star reviews. That signaled to the Amazon buying market that it was a worthwhile book, and the Street Team provided the initial traction. And it’s not just the number of five-star reviews, it’s also how many reviews were helpful or not. We basically created our own Amazon Vine program.

What didn’t work the way you expected?

Baratunde Thurston: The goal of 20,000 pre-sales didn’t work. Every weekday in February, I should have been doing something for Black History Month. That didn’t quite work, because the lead time for booking events is six months to a year, and we weren’t on top of it early enough. As I mentioned, having the Street Team directly account for a certain number of units distributed didn’t quite work.

What role did Craig Cannon play?

Baratunde Thurston: I knew Craig loosely at the Onion [where he was graphics editor]. He invited me to lunch to talk about something he was working on, a project with Skillshare. About five or six months before the book launched, we did a class on how to be black. That was a good test for our relationship.

I would have been able to do a lot of that worse. Even the two of us are only hitting 60% capacity. We should have had merch ready at launch. At some of our book events, we didn’t have books.

For people who don’t have a Craig, the most important thing is the personal one-on-one outreach. Look at the market of people interested in your topic, interested in you. Start with your inner circle. I had an epiphany with Gary Vaynerchuk. I asked: “Did I ever ask you to buy my book?” He said, “Yeah, I bought it yesterday.” I talked about his book, but cash on the table — it didn’t happen. He wished he had identified everyone he knows, sending a personal note explaining: “A) buy the book; B) this means a lot to me. You owe me or I will owe you. Here’s some things you can do to help: If you have speaking opportunities, let me know. For instance, I would love to speak at schools.” Make it easy for people who want to help you. Everything else is bonus. If you haven’t already converted the inner circle, you’ve skipped a critical step.

What specific marketing technique would you recommend to other authors?

Baratunde Thurston: You can make everything easier by figuring out what value to attach your book to. We’ve been working under the over-arching theme of identity. If you blog every week about why your book is so awesome, nobody cares. If you’re producing relevant, interesting content, they get attached to you in context. That leads to sales. It’s a good model.

Once you’ve actually articulated what that value is, make everything else consistent with that. For us, it was comfort with yourself and your identity — everybody has an outsider identity. That provides a roadmap for interviews and events. It establishes the brand and reinforces it. This approach requires time and consideration, but not cash. It’s not just reactive. For instance, this book is about DIY culture that makes the world a better place. With that approach, somebody like my friend Nora Abousteit can get involved, even though race, per se, isn’t her issue.

Anything else you want to add?

Baratunde Thurston: There was a very important tactical layer, the secret sauce: Knod.es [Note: this is launching to the public soon]. Ron Williams, Knod.es founder, has been an essential shadow. The types of services Knod.es provides — pre-qualified leads — are going to be important for everything. We were sending targeted blasts around and used Knod.es to augment that. The results have been incredible.

For example, we wanted people to submit more content to the How To Be Black Tumblr. After launch, it had faded. We recruited 18 people [some from the Street Team] to push a message through Facebook and email. We had a 50% conversion rate on those messages, and got in nine stories without trying that hard. In the same way you approach your network of friends, you can do the same with social networks where you don’t know them as well but they still want to help. You still have to make it easy for people to help you, but finding the value in your existing relationships — that’s incredibly valuable. “The Today Show” isn’t available to everyone.

]]>http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/05/baratunde-thurston-book-marketing.html/feed4How Twitter helps a small bookstore thrivehttp://radar.oreilly.com/2011/11/twitter-omnivore-books.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/11/twitter-omnivore-books.html#commentsMon, 28 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2011/11/twitter-omnivore-books.htmlOmnivore Books in San Francisco looks like a traditional bookstore. Opened three years ago in a former butcher shop, the small, bright room is stocked floor to ceiling with new and vintage cookbooks. Locals and tourists come by to browse, or they’re on a mission to buy the latest installment of Canal House or Lucky Peach. The proprietor, Celia Sack, is the person most often behind the counter.

Sack, who has been in retail for years (she and her partner opened Noe Valley Pet next door to Omnivore in 1999), believes that integrating her personality into the shop is a key part of its success. For the store’s Twitter account, she follows this rule: one third personal, two thirds professional. “You don’t want people to feel marketed to all the time,” she said. “It’s so important that I’m the face of the store — and that’s important digitally, too.”

So, while the majority of her tweets are, in fact, about store business — particularly the author events she holds almost nightly — her personality tends to come through in those posts, too:

And:

And:

The Omnivore Books account has more 7,000 unusually enthusiastic followers, and Sack says that people who come into the shop commonly introduce themselves by their Twitter handles. Often, they have stories that relate to something she posted, and though she’s careful not to divulge too much personal information, she readily shares enough of her sensibility that, as she puts it, “people feel warm and loyal.”

Interestingly, connecting with customers isn’t what Sack considers the biggest benefit of Twitter. When she opened the store in November 2008, she knew she wanted to hold a lot of author events. She figured she could build on her small circle of food-world connections to draw in speakers — chef Traci des Jardins (@chef_traci), for example, is a long-time friend. Plus, Sack could reach out to publishers who might be sending their authors on book tours. The first part of the strategy worked; the second part, not so much.

“Early on, I really wanted to have Flo Braker speak here, and I kept trying through the publisher,” Sack said. “They’d repeatedly say, ‘We’re trying to reach her,’ but nothing would happen. And then Flo contacted me and said, ‘I’d love to speak at your store.’ Of course, she hadn’t heard a word from the publisher.” Sack started to think that contacting authors directly would be a better way to go, but they weren’t always easy to find.

Then, in April 2009, a friend introduced Sack to Twitter. Sack took to it right away. She enjoyed the brevity, she liked posting observations from the store, and it fit with the intermittently busy-slow rhythm of retail. And here’s something special: Sack is not at all technical; she didn’t then and doesn’t now own a cell phone. (She tweets from the store’s desktop computer.)

Although Twitter was Sack’s “only technological milieu,” it didn’t take her long to figure out that she could use it to connect with other people. Food writer David Lebovitz (@davidlebovitz) was an early inspiration. “I wrote him [an @message] and said, ‘I know you don’t have a book now, but if you’re ever in SF, I’d love to have you come give a talk.” He responded enthusiastically, and the proverbial light bulb went off for Sack.

She began using Twitter to reach out to authors directly — whether they had books coming out or not (she included her email address so they could follow up easily). The outreach had two big benefits. First, authors would turn around and tell their publishers about Omnivore Books, which put the shop on the map. Cookbook publishers now routinely contact her (though Sack notes that it’s important for her to maintain a personal relationship with authors, in part because there’s a lot of turnover among publishing house publicists). Second, when she wrote to authors — Dorie Greenspan (@doriegreenspan), for example — people who followed them both would see the notes and chime in with comments about how great Omnivore is for readings. “Having that backup is powerful,” said Sack.

Sack wins over customers and authors alike with her idiosyncratic voice (I was surprised to learn that people ask all the time if she writes the store’s tweets; who could you pay to use the hashtag #BadLesbian in reference to yourself?). She emphasizes the importance of putting your personality into it and being interesting because that’s who you are, not because you want to draw followers for the sake of a higher number. And she adds, “The strategy is to make people feel included not excluded, to make them feel part of your world.”

She recalls a recent example: A guy planned to surprise his girlfriend with a marriage proposal in the store. Sack was nervous but excited and live-tweeted the episode, beat by beat. Her followers were riveted. “Tweeting about it was personal and spontaneous, and I happened to take out my camera — and it worked! I showed the couple all the responses. ‘Congrats from London.’ ‘Crying at our desks in Chicago.’ They were so overwhelmed. It was totally fun.” Later, she mentioned to me that she’d picked up 100 new followers that day.

]]>http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/11/twitter-omnivore-books.html/feed2Would I attend my own conference?http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/would-i-attend-my-own-conferen.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/would-i-attend-my-own-conferen.html#commentsThu, 24 Mar 2011 16:47:28 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2011/03/would-i-attend-my-own-conferen.htmlWhen you’re deciding whether to attend a conference, and you’re checking out the website, what do you consider? Most likely, you’ll look at the program, searching for names you know and session titles that describe compelling topics.

If you’re like me—some of you are and some of you aren’t—you’ll also look for diversity among the speakers. If every speaker is a man, or if everyone is white, or both, I know this isn’t an event for me. I don’t need to hear more of the same prominent voices, and I don’t get much value out of an environment that takes a narrow, old-school view on who’s worth listening to.

Because some of you aren’t like me in your choices, there are profitable conferences with speaker rosters that look like roll call for the signers of the Constitution. But conferences that want to be taken seriously by people who take other kinds of people seriously need more diversity among the speakers to thrive. And conference organizers, whose goals often include highlighting new ideas, cannot simply recycle the same short list of well-known speakers from show to show.

Which is a funny thing for me to say. Because I’m co-chair, along with Brady Forrest, for Web 2.0 Expo, a large, semi-annual tech conference that starts on Monday and is among the shows co-produced by O’Reilly and UBMTechWeb that have been pilloried in the past for our speaker line-ups—particularly for not having enough women. While the last outcry came before I had this job, these sorts of discussions are cyclical, and the shows I’ve organized could reasonably be targets of such criticism.

What gives? And what can we do about it?

First, let’s put some data behind the idea that men are overrepresented as conference speakers. For the three Web 2.0 Expos I’ve organized, our speaker rosters have comprised 25 to 30 percent women. That’s a near-triumph, considering that only 10 percent of the people who apply to speak are women, and the vast, vast majority of well-known businesspeople in tech—the ones a lot of you look for when considering a conference pass—are men (more on that in a minute). But it’s far short of, say, a 50/50 split.

Further, I’m dismayed to report that when it comes to the percentage of women speakers, our not-stellar numbers are among the best in tech conferences. TechCrunch Disrupt’s NY 2010 show had fewer than 10% women speakers. Our sister show, Web 2.0 Summit—which is programmed by people other than Brady and me–had just around 10% women speakers in 2010. Twitter’s 2010 Chirp conference had one woman speaker listed on their site; Facebook’s F8 conference managed two or so. Future of Web Apps October 2010 show clocked in with 14% women speakers. The Bloomberg Empowered Entrepreneur Summit, which focuses on tech and takes place next month, has zero women entrepreneurs on the roster [4/18/11 update: Ruder Finn, the PR firm for the Bloomberg Summit, just let me know that the event wound up having about 20% women speakers, about half of whom are entrepreneurs]. Of course, conferences that focus on women, like BlogHer, have close to 100% female slates. But as a rule, general tech conferences don’t get near half.

There are two primary ways that conferences get speakers, and we use both methods. 1) You put out a public call for speakers (sometimes known as a call for proposals, or a call for papers, or whatever); you get a slew of applicants; you accept some of them. 2) You brainstorm a list of people you’d like to have speak; you reach out to many of them; some of them accept.

Here’s where these methods go wrong: 1) About 10 percent of the public applicants will be women, even if you ask women to apply. 2) The brainstorming, which requires that you know of the speakers already, produces even worse results: 5 percent on a good day. (Another conference organizer has described the second process like this: “Who should we have this year?” A long list of well-known people gets suggested. Somebody notices there aren’t any women on the list. “Ok, what women should we ask?” “We had Caterina Fake last year, but Carol Bartz and Sheryl Sandberg might be free.” “Right, who else?” Longish pause. “I wonder if Ev Williams or Biz Stone is available.”)

This is where we have a chance to change things.

In a recent post, “Designers, Women and Hostility in Open Source”, Gina Trapani argues that to boost the participation of women in open source projects, the projects need to organize differently than they often do. Her recommendations, based on her own experiences as an organizer, include things like welcoming and mentoring new participants, recognizing valuable contributions that aren’t just code, and, indeed, valuing things other than the code. Note that she does not recommend that women participants behave differently in order to gain status.

We have a similar opportunity to rethink conference rosters. Let’s take the call for proposals method of finding speakers. When people call out a show for having a paltry percentage of women in the lineup, the traditional response is to explain (or complain) that very few women applied and to then call on more women to enter in the proposal system. Colleagues of mine, people I respect deeply, have gone this route.

But it doesn’t work. While, obviously, some women will apply to speak, the overwhelming evidence is that most will not. In a post last year, Clay Shirky, lamented that his female students were far less likely to sing their own praises and ask for things that would benefit them, like recommendations, than were his male students. His suggestion? That the women act more like the men. While I generally enjoy agreeing deeply with Clay, he—like the conference organizers calling on more women to apply—has missed a key point. If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won’t do so, you’ve institutionalized a gap.

Better instead, as Gina recommends, to change your system. For conference organizers, that means not just opening up a public call for proposals and asking Women 2.0 and Girls in Tech to tell their friends, but also seeking out and inviting individual women. That may sound inefficient, and it is time-consuming. But if your supposedly efficient public-call system isn’t yielding the desired results, then it’s simply failing efficiently.

We’ve gotten fairly good results at Expo reaching out to individual women. Key to this success is that we aren’t looking to put women on stage because they’re women, we’re seeking out great speakers whom we may have overlooked because they’re women. So it’s not uncommon that I’ll hear about a woman who might have a good presentation to give, but when I talk with her, it’s clear she’s not a fit for our show. I don’t shoehorn in those women, I move on and find others who are right for us.

To improve our efficiency, I enlist help reaching individuals. For instance, at Expo, we generally prefer single speakers or co-presenters to panels. But when somebody proposes an intriguing panel to us, I ask the organizer to include at least one woman with appropriate expertise. I’ve had dozens of these conversations. Almost always, the organizer’s response is, “Oh, right, hadn’t thought of that, good idea. A would be great, or we could ask B if she’s free.” Only once has the response been, “I won’t be able to find anybody.”

In addition to panel organizers, I plant the seed with founders, CEOs and other senior businesspeople. When I meet them (male or female), and we get to chatting about conferences, I ask them to consider actively supporting their female employees as speakers. For the CEOs, that might mean brainstorming with the employees on conferences they could reach out to and topics they could propose, giving them time to write the proposals and travel to shows, and maybe offering really good speaker training. While I can’t yet track results for this mini-initiative, I’ve been surprised to find that when I make these suggestions, businesspeople most often look like the light bulb has gone off, “Right, yes. I can do that stuff—and I want to.”

So you can supplement the call-for-proposals method with a raft of invitations (and bolster that with help from CEOs). But where do you find the women to invite? And what do you do about the brainstorming-notable-people method? In both cases, the hurdle is that accomplished women are, more often than not, less prominent (because, y’know, they don’t speak at conferences as frequently).

If I were to ask you: Who are the ten biggest names among web CEOs? Feel free to include hardware and software companies. And also: Who are the ten biggest names among web entrepreneurs? Feel free to include people from your first list. Your lists, like mine, would include few or no women. So now, even if I change the question to ask you: Who’s doing interesting work we might want to highlight? Well, now your brain is primed to remember the men you came up with a minute ago. And you’re all set to overlook a slew of compelling speakers.

This is where lists are really key. I simply keep lists of C-level women in tech, women entrepreneurs, women VCs, women tech journalists, women consultants and so on. And I find women to add by keeping a close eye on everyone else’s lists, conferences, books, blog comments and tweets—and then, often, seeking out video of these women to get a sense of whether they’re good speakers. (Incidentally, I am, for various reasons, skeptical of those “Top Women in Tech” and “Female Entrepreneurs to Watch” lists. But I have to admit that when they prompt your team to remember specific women in the brainstorming process, or when they help you find those interesting women you wouldn’t otherwise have known about, they’re useful.) No question, when we’re trying to move the needle on our percentage of women speakers, being able to consult these lists give us a fighting chance.

Maintaining these lists takes work. But y’know what? That’s part of our jobs. And it leads to a world in which I might just be interested in attending my own conference.

Among the things I haven’t tackled in this post: Why are women less likely to propose themselves as speakers (and what can we do about that)? Does an increase in great female speakers affect attendee satisfaction or measurably improve the bottom line? Are there ways that matter in which women speakers are different to work with than men? If there’s interest, I’ll consider a follow-up piece.

Also in this post, I’ve focused on female speakers. But tech conferences—including my shows—could benefit from efforts to increase the diversity of speaker rosters along other vectors, including race, age, physical ability and other factors that influence experience, perception and understanding. What else can we do to improve our line-ups? Thoughtful, constructive ideas welcome.

]]>http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/would-i-attend-my-own-conferen.html/feed43Hot Topics, Sharp Questionshttp://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/hot-topics-sharp-questions.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/hot-topics-sharp-questions.html#commentsMon, 28 Feb 2011 19:30:00 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2011/02/hot-topics-sharp-questions.htmlBring your eyeballs! Over on the Web 2.0 Expo blog, Kaitlin Pike is posting one compelling piece after another. Brady and I, co-chairs for Web 2.0 Expo, did the easy part: we lined up speakers for the March show in SF. Now Kaitlin, community manager for Web 2.0 Expo, is doing the hard part: conducting and writing up useful interviews. A few we’ve particularly liked:

* Talk to Your Customers: Laura Klein on User Research (interview with one of the sharpest user experience consultants in the biz). “Their metrics were telling them that a new design they were testing was failing, but once we found and fixed a very small problem, it completely changed the outcome of the experiment.”

* How to Start a Web Business…Without Programming? (interview with serial entrepreneur Elizabeth Yin). “These days, for most internet businesses, the number one challenge is customer acquisition and marketing — not in building a website…the overwhelming majority of startups that fail don’t fail because their website didn’t work. They fail because not enough people used it.”

]]>http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/hot-topics-sharp-questions.html/feed0Web 2.0 Expo makes the move to Midtownhttp://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/web-20-expo-makes-the-move-to.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/web-20-expo-makes-the-move-to.html#commentsWed, 11 Aug 2010 00:09:47 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2010/08/web-20-expo-makes-the-move-to.htmlSheraton Hotel & Towers in midtown. It's better suited to fostering the kinds of connections we care about and, excitingly, it lets us hold evening program onsite. Learn more about what we have planned. ]]>Our vision for Web 2.0 Expo NY looks like this: smart leaders, looking toward the future of the web, gather together in a lively venue to meet, exchange ideas, and get a serious dose of inspiration. You make connections, you learn a lot, you have fun.

Here’s what Expo NY looked like last year: smart leaders, looking toward the future of the web, gathered in the vast lobby of the Javits Center and having a hard time finding our show at all. The Web 2.0 Expo signs were obscured by the much larger banners of a manufactured chemicals show that was in town the same week — and the conference portion of our show, in line with the Javits layout, was in the basement.

New York hosts not only a burgeoning tech startup scene, but also thousands of people who lead tech adoption in sectors like media, fashion, finance and the arts. Attendees of Web 2.0 Expo have repeatedly told us that they’re part of these groups, and they’re looking to our show to help them connect. So while Javits, like most expo halls, has acres of space designed to show off everything from new cars to fancy packaged foods, it’s not an ideal place for the Web 2.0 community to meet.

This year, to better align the venue with our vision and our attendees’ needs, we’re moving to the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in Midtown. It’s better suited to fostering the kinds of connections we care about and, excitingly, it lets us hold evening program onsite.

We’ve cooked up three great nights. On September 27, we’re bringing back an annual Expo favorite: Ignite, a fast-moving series of entertaining and enlightening presentations (with all-new speakers). On September 28, we’re hosting The Liar Show: four people tell outrageous tech stories — but only three are true. Grill the storytellers and guess which is fiction. On September 29, we’re holding Startup Showcase, in which 30 young companies demo their products, and you help pick three to join Tim O’Reilly and Fred Wilson for onstage pitch sessions. Of course, our evening events all include food and bevvies.

]]>http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/web-20-expo-makes-the-move-to.html/feed0What's the Secret to Submitting a Great Conference Proposal?http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/whats-the-secret-to-submitting.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/whats-the-secret-to-submitting.html#commentsTue, 06 Apr 2010 17:46:50 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2010/04/whats-the-secret-to-submitting.htmlYou may know that we hold Web 2.0 Expo NY in the fall. But here’s something that may surprise you: the drop-dead deadline for submitting a proposal is next Monday (April 12). In the past, we’ve extended the deadline a week, but we don’t have time for that this year. For a lot of people, that means a big scramble on Monday to get in your submission. As far as we’re concerned, that’s no problem.

But as far as you’re concerned, there is potential snag. For this CFP, we’re requiring video of the proposed speaker or panel moderator. If you don’t have a clip handy, you have to make one. While we don’t expect that to take more than 30 mins or an hour, you could have a hairy evening if you’re working on your submission at 11:45p.

We want the submission process to be smooth, even fun, for you. So we held a webcast with tips on submitting, and I’ve written up the Q&A, below, which includes full detail on the video requirement. Don’t miss the webcast–which has more info on what we look for. The webcast itself is posted on YouTube. The slides from the webcast are posted on SlideShare.

We look forward to reading and watching your proposals.

Q&A on the secrets of submitting a winning conference proposal:

Q: You HAVE to include video? A: Yes, we require it this year.

Q: Can you clarify on the video: sample speech video or elevator pitch — which is it? A: If you have a video of a strong presentation you’ve given before, feel free to post the link to that. If you don’t have a great video (or any video), create a quick-and-dirty (but clear and energetic!) elevator pitch and post that.

Q: So for the video – just be your fabulous self… yes? A: Yes, but we want to see that you can communicate. If your recording a fresh pitch for us, make sure you describe your talk, who it’s for, and what they’ll get out of it.

Q: What’s the ideal video length? A: The video should be no more than about two or three minutes long.

Q: Are there sample videos available? A: Not yet. We’re working on that.

Q: Is there a certain topic that you feel is overdone or that you get a lot of so that we can maybe avoid it? A: Not specifically, but we do see a lot of generic proposals that look very similar. If you propose a session that has unique lessons or data only you could reveal, it doesn’t matter nearly so much if the topic is fairly common.

Q: Can the presentations be too technical? A: We have a Development track, and a very large number of our attendees are programmers. See past shows for examples of technical talks we accepted. (Of course, we also take non-technical talks that are about applications or implications of technology. See past conferences to get a feel for the sort of things we look for.)

Q: If the speaker will speak at Web 2.0 San Francisco, will they NOT be considered for New York? A: We try not to repeat people too much from one show to the next. But if a speaker is very good, we will work with them for more than one show.

Q: Are you open to receiving two proposals from a given company? A: Our system doesn’t prevent you from submitting multiple ideas. But a lot of proposals from one individual or organization most often looks like that proposer has no idea what will work and is just spamming us with everything possible. Better to focus on one or maybe two ideas that are really sharp. We’re far more likely to take those seriously.

Q: You’ve mentioned particular ”tracks” of conferences — are those listed, or something we should consider when proposing? A: In the CFP form, we ask you to pick one or two topics that your session would fit under; those topics are the tracks. We don’t change the tracks a ton from show to show, so you can also take a look at previous shows to get an idea of our tracks, which generally include Development, Marketing, Design and Business Strategy, plus a bunch of mini-tracks on hot topics.

Q: You’ve had hands on session previously, are there any of those available? A: We’re looking primarily for 20-minute and 50-minute breakout sessions. These sessions can feature single speakers, co-presentations or panels. If you have more in-depth, hands-on content, we also program several 3-hour workshops, scheduled for the first day of the conference.

Q: Would submitting myself as a panelist be any different than a single speaker? A: Unlike a lot of other conference organizers, we don’t typically create panels ourselves. That is, we accept proposals for full panels, but we very, very rarely come up with ideas for panels on our own and then solicit people for them. In addition, we almost never place somebody on a panel that’s been proposed to us. So you’re welcome to submit panel ideas with yourself as moderator or panelist, but we can’t recommend that you simply submit yourself as a potential panelist.

Q: How many people attend Web 2.0 Expo? In NY in 2009, we had about 1,300 conference attendees (and about 4.500 total attendees, including people who came for just the keynotes and/or Expo Hall). Double both numbers for Expo SF in 2009.

Q: What makes a proposal stand out? A: A talk is two parts: the speaker and the topic (we talked earlier about sharing your unique story). A gem is less-known speaker who has been writing/speaking about their ideas. A great way to get a speaking slot is to be noticed first for your thinking and writing. Hacker News, for instance, is a good place to get recognized for Development sessions. Bar Camps and Ignites are another great place for speakers to share their ideas and show us some presentation chops.

Q: If we have more questions, who can we ask? A: ny-idea@web2expo.com or sf-idea@web2expo.com.

[Cross-posted to http://blog.web2expo.com/2010/04/2339.]

]]>http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/whats-the-secret-to-submitting.html/feed3What Would Jane Austen Have Twittered?http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/what-would-jane-austen-have-tw.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/what-would-jane-austen-have-tw.html#commentsMon, 30 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2009/11/what-would-jane-austen-have-tw.htmlWeb 2.0 Expo NY--a sprawling, week-long conference and exhibition--I ducked into the Morgan Library to catch "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy." A one-room show about an 18th century novelist seemed like the perfect antidote to a week of tech talk in the Death Star Javits Center. As I'd hoped, the Morgan focuses on a handful of objects from Austen's life, and the commentary is thoughtful. I was surprised, though, to find myself thinking that had Twitter been around in Austen's time (1775-1817), she would likely have been a fan. ]]>After the recent Web 2.0 Expo NY–a sprawling, week-long conference and exhibition–I ducked into the Morgan Library to catch “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy.” A one-room show about an 18th century novelist seemed like the perfect antidote to a week of tech talk in the Death Star Javits Center.

As I’d hoped, the Morgan focuses on a handful of objects from Austen’s life, and the commentary is thoughtful. I was surprised, though, to find myself thinking that had Twitter been around in Austen’s time (1775-1817), she would likely have been a fan.

Austen wrote more than 3,000 letters, many to her sister Cassandra. They corresponded constantly, starting new letters to each other the minute they finished the last one and sharing the minutia of their lives. From reading Austen’s novels, I’d always assumed that people in her era spent a long time waiting for the mail. But the show mentions that during Austen’s life, mail in London and environs was delivered six times a day. Sometimes, a letter sent in the morning was delivered the same evening. Which makes snail mail sound a lot more like email or twitttering.

The speed of mail at the time and the content of the Austen sisters’ letters suggest that the desires to communicate instantly and to let other people know what you ate for breakfast aren’t modern phenomenon. Of course, Twitter lets you share your soy milk-to-cereal ratio with strangers and thus adds a layer of publishing to our updates. But people today often assume that email, Twitter and other relatively instant communication media have created a slew of brand new communication behaviors. The Jane Austen show at the Morgan suggests just the opposite: our human patterns are surprisingly consistent, and technology evolves to meet us.

Incidentally, the show doesn’t say when multi-daily snail mail faded, and I wonder if it passed out of fashion with the rise of the telegraph in the mid-1800s. Anyone know?

We’re bringing in five startups who will get two minutes each to give their customer pitch (not their VC pitch), as if meeting a potential customer at a cocktail party (i.e., no slides but OK to drink if you want). To give them feedback, we’ve assembled a top-notch panel of serial entrepreneurs and marketing experts. It’s not a competition, so there’s no judging or ranking—just discussion among the entrepreneurs, panelists and other session attendees.

We’re trying this idea for the first time, so who knows how it will go? But in the entrepreneurial spirit, we’ve mitigated our risks: even if the format doesn’t sing, the session can only be a hit given the participants. (Thanks to Sean O’Malley for helping us connect with a lot of these folks.)

The session is on Weds, April 1 from 10:50 – 11:40a. If you still need a free pass for Web2Open, you can register using the code websf09opn. There’s more general event info on the Open website.

]]>http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/web2open-an-exciting-experimen.html/feed1Web2Open: Great Sessions, Recessionary Pricinghttp://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/web2open-great-sessions-recess.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/web2open-great-sessions-recess.html#commentsWed, 25 Mar 2009 06:39:50 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2009/03/web2open-great-sessions-recess.htmlNext week is Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, a four-day mind meld for programmers, practitioners and novitiates. The Expo is co-produced by O’Reilly and TechWeb, who, for the third year in a row, are devoting resources and a row of rooms to Web2Open—a free, two-day unconference that anyone can attend.

The Open, April 1 and 2 at Moscone West, is like most unconferences in that we provide a blank grid and designated rooms so that you can create your own discussion sessions. But unlike a lot of unconferences, the Open includes a handful of prescheduled sessions. And I gotta tell you, this year, we’ve got some incredible stuff on tap–all for the low, low price of free.

Among the highlights are Hybrid sessions (more fun than the name suggests). We pick three sessions in the main conference track and open them to all Web2Open attendees. Then the presenters from those sessions follow up with lively discussions in the Open. You can join both parts of Hybrid, or just one. This year’s Hybrids include:

To attend the Open, you need a free Expo pass and the urge to participate in conversation. The Open site has details on how to register, along with session times. See you next week!

]]>http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/web2open-great-sessions-recess.html/feed0Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales: A Case Studyhttp://radar.oreilly.com/2009/02/twitter-drives-traffic-sales-a.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/02/twitter-drives-traffic-sales-a.html#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2009 18:00:00 +0000http://blogs.oreilly.com/radar/2009/02/twitter-drives-traffic-sales-a.htmlBack in December, Dell reported that offers from its Dell Outlet Twitter account had led to more than $1 million in revenue. A small percentage for a company that books $16B in revenue annually–but a nice number nonetheless, particularly in a dreary economy.

Question is: are they the only ones?

I haven’t yet found anyone else claiming to have micromessaged their way to a number with six zeroes. But I did have an interesting conversation recently with a company that used Twitter to drive a 20 percent increase in sales in December, and additional growth in February. Here’s the story.

Namecheap, a 70-person company headquartered in LA, is a domain name registrar that’s been in business for nine years. They rely mostly on word-of-mouth advertising and have just two people who do marketing (one of whom is devoted to SEO); almost everyone else provides customer service.

Michelle Greer, their sole marketing specialist, has been on Twitter personally since 2007, and she thought the service might be a good fit for Namecheap. To convince the CEO, she showed him what Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO, was doing on Twitter, including promotions. He gave her the go-ahead to experiment.

Michelle set up a Namecheap Twitter account, and in December, to launch it, she ran a contest: once an hour, she posted a Christmas-related trivia question (she’s used TweetLater to preschedule the posts and a book to help her come up with the 600+ trivia questions). To win, you had to be one of the first three @replies with the correct answer. The prize was credit a for one-year domain registration; to receive it, you needed a Namecheap account.

The company considers the contest a success. People got addicted to it, battling to get in the first replies. And they Twittered and blogged about it, too, helping Namecheap’s follower count jump from 200 to over 4,000 in the one month and bumping the company’s PageRank, too.

So what about the actual business numbers? Namecheap’s site traffic increased more than 10 percent in December, driving a 20 percent increase in domain registrations. In addition, Michelle says, “The increase in Twitter followers allowed us to see a 30 percent increase in traffic when we ran a Super Bowl promo on Twitter [in February].”

The contest had costs: primarily Michelle’s time and intense attention for the whole month of December. Still, it’s no surprise that Namecheap is trying more contests. And they’re not the only ones. This week, our friends at Boing Boing launched a Tweet Week contest, giving away cool stuff to help build their Twitter followerships–which can, in turn, help drive blog traffic. Meanwhile, a consortium of four dog-focused businesses–Paw Luxury, Best Bully Sticks, Ask Spike Online and Four Legged Media–are starting the Barkhunt tonight, a scavenger hunt that will last for just one hour, with clues going up on Twitter every five minutes. (I swear, I didn’t pick that one because I’m a dog person; if you know of a cat-related Twitter contest, add a comment or @reply me, and I’ll update the post.)

Likely, it’ll be a while before a contest drives $1 million in revenue through Twitter. But they’re not the only way to make non-spam money through the service, and it’s interesting to see companies experimenting with the medium.